Legal briefing on the rights of stateless Palestinians in the UK September 2025 1.2. Routes to protection in the UK Many Palestinians have complex histories of displacement, and either themselves or their families have been forced to flee multiple times from different countries while seeking refuge. By the time they arrive in the UK, many have endured successive displacements, sometimes across different regions and generations. Palestinians in the UK who have fled their country of former habitual residence (whether from one of UNRWA’s five areas of operation or any other country) may be entitled to protection under various mechanisms. These include refugee status in accordance with the Refugee Convention (either under Article 1D or Article 1A(2)) and leave to remain on other human rights grounds, including under Article 3 (the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) and Article 8 (the right to family and private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Palestinians may also be eligible to apply for leave to remain as stateless persons in accordance with the 1954 Convention and the rules outlined in the Immigration Rules Appendix on Statelessness. Unfortunately, Palestinians in UNRWA’s areas of operation have generally been excluded from UK resettlement schemes, which rely exclusively on referrals from UNHCR.18 Choosing the appropriate legal route It is important to consider which legal route is the most appropriate in the particular circumstances of each case. The report ‘Statelessness in practice: Implementation of the UK statelessness application procedure’ provides a detailed list of the relevant considerations when deciding which application is most suitable in each individual case, and Asylum Aid’s information page on statelessness provides helpful guidance and updated information. Where an applicant is unsuccessful under one procedure, this will not exclude them from applying for leave to remain or protection, where eligible, under another procedure. Since there is no formal referral mechanism in the UK from the asylum procedure to the possibility to apply for leave to remain as a stateless person, many Palestinians who are in fact stateless but were denied refugee status may remain unaware of their rights as stateless persons in the UK. Exact figures on the number of stateless persons in the UK are difficult to obtain and unreliable, but UNHCR reports a total of 4,672 stateless people in the United Kingdom in 2024, including 389 (non-refugees) granted leave to remain as a stateless person.19 However, the data provided by the UK Government is not analysed or presented in such a way as to enable an accurate understanding of the stateless population or the number of Palestinian refugees in the UK, as there are potentially overlapping statistical categories, such as ‘stateless’, ‘unknown nationality’, and ‘Palestinian Bank, including East Jerusalem (11 July 2025); UN Human Rights Council, Anatomy of a Genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, A/HRC/55/73 (1 July 2024); Request for the Indication of Provisional Measures; BADIL, ‘77 Years of Ongoing Nakba’ (n 4); Amnesty International, Gaza: Evidence points to Israel’s continued use of starvation to inflict genocide against Palestinians (3 July 2025);. 18 See, for example, Home Office, UK Refugee Resettlement: Policy Guidance (18 August 2021) p 4. The lawfulness of the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme was challenged on the basis that a Palestinian who had fled Syria could not be referred for resettlement by UNHCR as they were in UNRWA’s area of operation. However, the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Secretary of State, upholding the lawfulness of the scheme and confirming the decision of the Court of Appeal. See R (on the application of Marouf) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department) [2023] UKSC 23 and the lower court decisions: Turani v SSHD [2021] EWCA Civ 348 ); Turani v SSHD [2019] EWHC 1586 (Admin). 19 UNHCR, Global Trends Report 2024: Annex 4; ENS, Statelessness Index: United Kingdom. 6